‘War Horse’ Closes in Britain, but Its Influence Gallops On

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A scene from a London performance of the play “War Horse” in 2014.CreditBrinkhoff/Moegenburg

By Matt Trueman

March 11, 2016

LONDON — After seven years in the West End here, “War Horse” is onto its final furlong. Just after 10 p.m. on Saturday, its equine star, Joey — that magnificent puppet – will gallop offstage at the New London Theater for the last time. Some 2.7 million people will have cheered him on there, but “War Horse” has been a global success, seen by nearly seven million worldwide. It has changed the National Theater, which opened it in 2007 — and arguably British theater as a whole — dramatically.

The concept still sounds unlikely: a World War I play starring a life-size puppet horse. But “War Horse” worked. Nick Stafford’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel, about a Devonshire farm boy and his prize horse, separated by events in Europe, captures the horrors of modern, mechanical warfare. The staging, by contrast, directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, is humble and human, with folk songs by John Tams and the exquisite, handcrafted puppets created by the South African theater company Handspring. Their designer, Adrian Kohler, was the son of a South African boatbuilder. It shows.

No one expected a hit — it started with actors running around a National rehearsal room in 2005 with cardboard horse heads and newspaper tails — but a hit it became. A huge one, which included a two-year Broadway run that won five Tony awards, including best play, in 2011. Joey, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, is “the kind of matinee idol New York hasn’t seen in ages.”

In Britain, “War Horse” has been a cultural phenomenon. When the Queen celebrated her Diamond Jubilee with a pageant down the River Thames, Joey reared up on the roof of the National Theater in salute. And subsequent international tours and franchised productions on four continents have made the National a global brand. Last September, a new Mandarin translation opened in China, where it tours until May.

“Joey has worked and worked and worked,” said Rufus Norris, the National’s artistic director, who took over from Nicholas Hytner in 2014. “As an ambassador for the National and what this theater can do, we’ve never had one like that puppet.”

Britain’s subsidized theaters used to hand their hits over to commercial producers for a meager royalty fee. In 2006, the National broke the mold by single-handedly transferring “The History Boys” to the West End for four months. “War Horse” would be its first runaway smash.

To oversee it, the National established a commercial arm, NT Productions. “As well as keeping artistic quality control on the work ourselves, it meant we could look after the returns for it,” Mr. Norris explained.

The show has taken in 140 million pounds ($200 million) at the British box office — £300 million ($430 million) worldwide — and left the National equipped to move subsequent successes like “One Man, Two Guv’nors” and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” into the West End and beyond. (Other troupes have followed suit: the Royal Shakespeare Company with “Matilda the Musical,” for instance.)

All of this has meant a period of extraordinary growth: Since 2007, the National’s annual revenue has increased to £117 million ($166 million), from £48 million ($68 million). Profits from commercial transfers contributed around £7.5 million ($10.7 million) to the National’s recent £80 million ($115 million) refurbishment — a project never even envisaged before “War Horse” — to transform the foyers and amenities of Denys Lasdun’s brutalist South Bank building.

“That’s a fantastic asset for the next 50 years,” Mr. Norris said. “What it meant is that we did, as an organization, become slightly commercially dependent.”

Since 2010, the National has faced cuts to its government subsidy, which its commercial transfers have helped to offset.

So why close the show now? Lisa Burger, the National’s executive director, said it “had a bumpy summer.”

Though it never tipped into the red, Ms. Burger said it came close. (Unlike on Broadway, London theaters don’t release sales figures.) The National decided not to undertake the costly process of recasting it once more. “There was every prospect that if we did so, we would lose money next financial year,” Ms. Burger explained.

But even if it had proved profitable for another year, shuttering the show sends a particular message — that the new artistic team is standing on its own feet. Mr. Norris said the organization had become “leaner” and no longer needed to rely on commercial transfers — now or in the future. “We’re halfway down the line of weaning ourselves off that,” he predicted. “The books will balance this year.”

The show’s artistic influence, however, is likely to remain. Historically, British theater has centered on the playwright, but for the “most successful show of the last decade” to be a devised project is “a great provocation,” Mr. Norris said. Others have followed: “London Road” and “Curious Incident” were both developed similarly.

One of Mr. Norris’s first moves as artistic director has been to merge the literary department and the National Theater Studio — its research and development space — into a single entity, now known as the New Work Department. The aim is to embrace a range of theater artists and practices.

During its remodeling, the National built a temporary theater, the Shed, funded entirely by Broadway profits from “War Horse” and made for small-scale experimental shows. Though intended as a one-year fix, it will house its final production in April, three years after opening, and its success has influenced the programming across the theater’s three other spaces.

Behind the scenes, the National isn’t seeking out the next “War Horse,” nor does it need to, but Mr. Norris insists it is “poised to exploit whatever comes along.”

“The hits,” he added, “are never the ones you think they are.”

Correction:

An article on Saturday about the closing of the hit play “War Horse” in London misidentified the milestone Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating when Joey, a life-size puppet horse in the play, reared up on the roof of the National Theater in salute. It was her Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years on the throne — not her Golden Jubilee, which occurred 10 years earlier, in 2002. The article also referred incorrectly to the folk songs in the play. They were written for it by John Tams; they are not “ancient.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘War Horse’ Retires; the Race Is Changed. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe